Mathew A. Powers

Mathew A. Powers received his MFA in Digital Art in 2006 concluding a four-year career as Webmaster of the SoFA website and as an Assistant Instructor at Indiana University, Bloomington. He was also an Adjunct Instructor at the Columbus, Indiana Ivy Tech Community College Visual Communication department specializing in game creation. Additionally, Mathew spent time as a Flash Media Developer at the Bloomington based company, Option Six. At Option Six, Mathew designed and created e-Learning applications and animations for clients such as Microsoft, Lilly, and Toyota. Currently, Mathew is a lecturer at the IU SOIC at Indianapolis. His teachings focus on game creation (Unreal 4), sequential narratives, creature/character design, history of video games, game design theory and psychology, and public ARG game creation. As an lecturer, Mathew has worked on several public games works such as the Energy Safe Kids game project, (http://www.vectrenenergysafe.com/), as the head of game design and development, as the PI on a MacArthur Foundation grant to teach 5th graders how to classify animals with the Spore engine, and he recently concluded a 4 year ARG gaming project with his teaching partner, Todd Shelton. This project named, “Return of Aetheria”, (https://www.facebook.com/ReturnOfAetheria?fref=ts) was a student-created, class-based ARG that was displayed at GenCon, IndyPopCon, and Indy Comic Con. It used video mapping, touch screens, cell-phone apps, Oculus-Rift, and traditional analog game theory techniques to run players through multiple 3 – 4 day gaming experiences.